A smidgen of savages

My hobby time rather plunged off a cliff in the last four months of the year, with the result that of my target of 50 or so miniatures to paint since early September I've managed only a handful of savage orcs and a shaman.

A handful of savage orcs

I tried to keep their colour scheme to pale clothing (where worn at all) and light wood colours. Along with the blue war paint I'm hoping that they'll stand out from the drabber normal orcs on the table, without themselves being garish.



I'd ideally add some more war paint at some point (I rather like what Thantsants did with his), and devices for their shields, and also give them a matt varnish to knock back the gloss finish that their skin has ended up with. For now though I need to consider them table-ready and move on to other things.

I also want to considerably add to their numbers - while a small group has some tactical value as a slayer-type unit, really I'd like to be fielding a tribal contingent of probably 40+ of them. Not any time soon though!

Mostly still not painted

Boars and dragons

Real life scuppered last Friday's plans for what looks like a fine scenario from Gaj over at Warhammer for Adults, pitching my chaos lord against a dastardly witch hunter, so instead I found myself playing Dux Britanniarum.

I was very impressed by the battle rules, both as a set of wargames rules and as an evocation of the period. The campaign rules are apparently even more impressive.

The pre-battle praying, fighting and boasting really helped add to the flavour, and I would think only really work within the dark ages setting. Most of the rules it would seem though could happily be warped into a more standard fantasy setup, which I'm definitely keen to try out for my Newhammer project (although it definitely falls down on my 4th rule for that, more on that later).

Some of the systems, such as the activation process and the random element to movement are probably old hat to people who haven't been out of the wargaming loop quite as long as me, but I quite enjoyed working within the constraints they imposed. The lesser control than I'm used to also seemed to add a slightly more relaxed air to the proceedings (although that might be down to a good opponent and GM). The system for shock (impacting both morale and fighting power) also seemed both a good idea and well implemented.

The real heart of the game though is the Fate card system, whereby throughout the game you can buy random cards, which may be more or less useful for a particular side (or even in some cases completely useless) and can then be spent to boost a unit during its turn, or help counter an opponent's move. They give a nice hidden element to the contest, vaguely reminiscent of the role of magic in Warhammer, and also I felt added a hint of the mythic over the mundane. However they also impose a real limitation on the flexibility of the game (or conversely creates the ability to produce supplements) in that each new army needs their own card set. While I'm sure you could invent your own, in much the same way as you could invent your own codex for modern WH40K, this would always be unsatisfactory and subject to debate.

So while I would heartily recommend the game for some dark ages skirmishing, I'm also disappointed that it's inherently limited in what it does. Although I do have some plans for some dabbling...

A late (half) orc

Early orctober was looking quite productive, then suddenly it's late November and I've only just got around to finishing this guy -

Shaman with Skull Staff - classic Grenadier sculpt available from Forlorn Hope Games (amongst others).

Once I finally got my brushes in hand again he was a pleasure to paint, and I'm really pleased with the way he turned out. I'm trying to minimise my drybrushing (although I still used it here on the fur, staff and hair) and instead shade by hand and mostly I think this has turned out quite well. As always the camera highlights some issues which don't really show up in the flesh, but I'm resisting the urge to go back and fix them until I've got a few more chaps painted.

It's savage orcs next, although I'm not sure if I can get mine looking as good as Thantsants' tribe. After that I'll probably find myself painting another shaman - I have a really bad track record for keeping wizards alive in battle, and the trouble with narrative gaming is you can't just show up using the same figure who was killed last time. But I do have two more orcs and a hobgoblin caster queuing up to plug the gap...

Reikland versus reality - some conclusions

Ages ago I rambled on about older and later incarnations of the Reikland, specifically about how far there are between the "points of light".

At the time my view was that Andy Law's map was probably a more realistic view of the Principality - but less interesting than the Death on the Reik version in terms of adventure. Now I'm not so sure...

I finally sat down to work out some demographics, drawing on figures from Wikipedia, and S. John Ross's Medieval Demographics Made Easy, and here's what I've come up with. There's some pretty extreme hand-waving involved here, so probably any other conclusion is equally if not more valid, but with a couple of tweaks it seems that the Reikland Gazetteer is at least plausable.

In Demographics Made Easy terms Reikland has 2 cities (Altdorf and Nuln), although it shares them both with neighbouring provinces. Despite the Renaissance setting, given how surrounded and riven with enemies (orcs, beastmen, etc.) the Empire is I'll stick with just 9x the number of towns compared to cities, and not the 14x the number. So we have 18 towns.

With the random 10% to 40% drop in size from town to town, here are my 18 towns compared to the Gazetteer -

Generated town	Pop	Reikland town	Pop (adjusted)
Town A	7200	Carroburg	8000
Town B	5040	Bogenhafen	4500
Town C	3024	Kemperbad	3750
Town D	2722	Ubersreik	3500
Town E	2177	Dunkelburg	3000
Town F	1306	Auerswald	2500
Town G	1176	Schoppendorf	2500
Town H	1058	Delberz	2000
Town I	952	Stimmigen	1750
Town J	857	Grissenwald	1500
Town K	686	Grunburg	1200
Town L	411	Rottefach (nr Altdorf)	720 (was 88)
Town M	370	Autler (nr Altdorf)	648 (was 81)
Town N	296	Segeldorf (nr Nuln)	518 (was 48)
Town O	237	Geldrecht (nr Altdorf)	414 (was 49)
Town P	213	Koch (nr Auerswald)	373 (was 95)
Town Q	128	Wurstheim (nr Nuln)	223 (was 78)
Town R	102	Kleindorf (nr Grunburg)	179 (was 35)

Of course this is very arbitrary, but the exercise did highlight what seemed odd about the Gazetteer listing, being the complete lack of any settlement in the 101 to 999 population range. So selecting some villages at random (but concentrating near Altdorf and Nuln for obvious reasons) I've upgraded a few to towns.

Equally there's no reason why lots of more villages can't exist, but since the Gazetteer goes down to such small populations I'm happy assuming it lists them all. And a small number suits nicely the zone model described in the world guide section of the rulebook.

All of which is a very roundabout waying of saying I can justify to myself using the Death on the Reik version.

I'll check through the major coaching routes and make sure there's at least a coaching inn (perhaps heavily fortified) for each reasonable days travel. But prepare yourself for a much lonelier journey than would be the case with the later map.

Or at least, you hope you're alone...

One other thing

The reason I mentioned the Wikipedia demographics - the top 3 cities in the Holy Roman Empire in 1500 accounted for around 1% of the empire's population. So taking Altdorf, Nuln and Middenheim (total population 40,224) and allowing a much higher (3%) proportion of the population - allowing for how dangerous the rural areas are - that gives us a very rough population for the Old World Empire of around 1.3 million.

The Old World is a lot less densely populated than early 16th Century Europe.

Still searching for new old hobgoblins

I've been dithering excessively over my new hobgoblins - 7 months and counting  :(  - after having second thoughts over a few of them, and hence broadening my search for other options.

A big part of the problem is that I have two Fantasy Tribe and two C36 hobgoblins that I want to include in the mix, and singles or pairs from four other ranges, while hopefully ending up with a fairly coherent (but not uniform) unit.

In parallel to that, it's quite hard to say what defines a Citadel hobgoblin. The Fantasy Tribe figures are very much in fantasy armour - it's hard to identify any real world parallels. In fact the closest I can come for a match is imperial Roman armour, with distinctly non-Roman helms. See for example this Roman general -

Warlord Games' Roman general - image from Bob's Miniature Wargaming Blog

- whose armour bears a passing resemblance to the Fantasy Tribe chieftain seen here on the right, or so I feel -

Eastern hobgoblin from Mirliton, Armalion Red Moon orc, FT hobgoblin

The later C36 hobgoblins and especially the DL2 Hobgoblin Warriors move to somewhat more of an eastern vibe, but rather than full on samurai armour the C36 miniatures are more like full mail with patches of samurai armour, and the DL2s have samurai armour over flesh, whereas most samurai miniatures seem to be armour over clothing (sort of like the eastern hobgoblin in the picture above, although it's hard to tell much with the undercoating, sorry...).

Nihon orc, Grenadier goblin, FT again for size

The Mirliton Nihon orc shown above seems to me to fit well with the more eastern of the Citadel miniatures, or the N17 Chronicle hobgoblins, however he is unfortunately the only one of the range I particularly like. The others all seem a bit chunky and crude and, as can be seen by the amount of crouching in the picture above, they're also a fair bit bigger than the other hobgoblins I've assembled. The goblin on the other hand is too short, but looks so great I had to include him!

I next looked to the Wargames Factory orc warband, which I rather like, however as shown below they're a bit on the skinny / realistic proportion side, in comparison to these other figures -

Wargames Factory warband orc, FT for comparison

They do however have a good-enough match for the Fantasy Tribes armour, I feel. I'm thinking of heroic-ing them by chopping the body in half vertically and puttying it back together with broader shoulders, and then adding bigger heads - perhaps the Hasslefree goblin ones. Rather more work than I was planning on originally!

I've one further plan up my sleeve - the ronin from Black Hat's samurai range seem a good source for samurai armour over flesh, so again I'm thinking of giving these some head swaps.

I do realise this is all slightly silly - given the amout of work involved I'd be much better off just holding my nose and paying over the odds on Ebay for actual Citadel hobgoblins, but this way is so much more interesting!

Next project - Gulgan's Raiders

The first half of this month was hectic on the real life front, meaning I barely had time to pick up a paint brush. I did though have time to keep up with what's going on elsewhere in the Oldhammer community, and think about the next project that I could fail to find time to paint...

With hobgoblins being very much a current theme - mine should even make it to the front of the paint queue next month, just in time for Orctober - Gaj's chaos thurauder post sparked my imagination. A lightweight chaos force would be a good substitute for the human side of the Dolgan Raiders scenario from the second Citadel Journal and tick a couple of boxes for me. Not only could I use the first Warhammer scenario I ever played for my Newhammer project, but I'd also have some extra options for my combined orcs and chaos force.

I'll concede that this isn't exactly original, but to me using lots of chaos thugs - as my ally Leromides did in our chaos and orcs versus undead game at BOYL - is a bit of a revelation. To me the whole point of a chaos force is getting to field these chaps -

The models are cool, and they're excellent fighters, but as an embittered orc commander the best thing about them is the lack of animosity, and rock-solid personal characteristics (in wargame terms, at least...). I also have to admit the high points cost is quite attractive when you're trying to assemble an army in the quickest possible time!

But, before I talk myself out of it, may I present ... Gulgan's Raiders.

Guldan - chaos warrior (double handed weapon, protection rune)*

12 beastmen (light armour, shield)†
Steffen - beastmen champion (light armour, shield)

18 thugs (light armour, bow)
Jurgen - chaos marauder (light armour, shield)

Chaos centaur

3 chaos hounds
Tarak - beastman minor hero (light armour)

Nikolai - human level 2 wizard (5 spells)

As near as I can make out these come within a point or two of the original forces.

* I'm curious why rune weapons were removed between 2nd and 3rd editions (although you could see the case for ditching the Greater Death Rune!). In 3rd edition terms think of this as a cool but expensive way of equipping Guldan in light armour...

† Perhaps these should be thugs as well, but having played lots of WFRP I just can't have a chaos raiders force without beastmen. Plus I've some that I'm itching to paint...

I'm not sure tactically how good the beastmen will be in a fight, given the loss of Static Combat Resolution so beloved by the theorycrafters in moving from a 20 strong unit to only 12. It's also interesting to me to note that none of the units in the Dolgan Raiders scenario nor the later Blood on the Snow have standards - it makes sense in the context of the scenario especially for the former, but I'd not realised until now how much they only became ubiquitous in 3rd edition.

To represent these chaps on the table I nearly have enough beastmen, but only a couple of genuine thug miniatures plus a couple more good proxies for the archers. Instead I plan a mixture of Foundry's Men at Arms and Viking archers, plus some of Warlord Games' Germanic archers for the slightly wilder look.

I'm not sure what to do about the chaos hounds - at some point in the distant past I acquired some AD&D blink dogs for reasons that now escape me, but I'm a bit reluctant to use them as conversion fodder for some reason. So Warlord's mastiff pack might well be the answer there as well.

But first I must concentrate on my previous paint queue, before growing the lead pile!

Orc boar boyz - eventually

The one of my two "should have been ready for BOYL" units is finally done, only a month late...

The remaining unit, my much-delayed hobgoblins, have been jumped in the queue by some savage orcs, for reasons I'll go into in a future post.

It does though mean I've sort-of met the target I set myself in October last year of getting this warband painted -

Sort-of, because they're not quite as done as I'd like - the boar boyz don't have their shield designs done, and neither they or the main boyz unit have standards yet. And some of the bases still need work. However I've started time-boxing myself on each unit in order to get more table-ready, I'll come back to them for a final polish once I've got the fuller warband painted. In theory by the end of the year...